


Strike Release

by orphan_account



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drugging, Entrapment, F/F, F/M, Incest, Manipulation, Multi, Obsession, dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 04:24:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5077696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The hands of a clock are funny things, they swing back before they go forth. Stories, too, swing back and forth. In this one, you do not kill the girl. </p><p>You keep her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strike Release

It was only ever going to end in one way.

You knew that when you saw her. You knew it when your brother saw her. You knew it when the two of you witnessed her for the first time, despite the separate occasions.

On your brother’s part, there had admittedly been less priming - it was he who had raced back to your hotel rooms and, after telling you all about his horrid encounter with the callous man who comprised a great deal of what your brother had been pinning his hopes on. You’d sensed from the way that he devolved into sticky syllables and saccharine descriptions that the girl who had softened the blow was one to whom he had immediately felt drawn to.

But you had, of course, expected that to end more like Enola, honestly. You’d expected her to be any of the rakishly beautiful creatures that liked to flutter and woo in society, the kinds of ladies who were drawn to your brother as a symbol of dark promises, of enticements hidden in the looming shadow of an old name and a new debt. You had expected her to be someone to suit him, in her own way, and to suit the house, and to suit your designs for her.

But that was not to be.

She was beautiful to behold, and you felt yourself go stiff as you saw her attached on your brother’s arm. A butterfly, you thought, a great golden butterfly, still half ensconced in the cream coloured silk of her pupation. But you could see what was blooming above, now, the transformed parts that blossomed even in the low golden light of candles.

You crossed the room, great red gown and silk and your hair in braids, every inch of you refined and bloody, and she smiled at you. She smiled at you, maybe not the way that she smiled at your brother, but the sun doesn’t have to beat its rays directly for one to feel the warmth. You felt she smiled at you like the moon, then, like she must have known you couldn’t stand the light of day, and a seed of trepidation grew within your breast.

At first, you thought it might be jealousy. The way she smiled at Thomas, the way that she glided so easily with him, laughed so readily, blew out the candle held by his perfect hand. But hers was a mirror to his; slender bones laid on slender bones, a pillar of wax not whiter than the two palms it sat beneath, though a little less pin.

At second, you knew the feeling growing inside of you for envy. But it was not quite what you expected. Not what you expected at all, in fact. 

Jealousy was fearing she’d take Thomas from you. Envy was that Thomas was keeping her all to himself.

-

It’s become a habit, now, the three of you. 

Thomas reads Edith’s scripts at night, and sometimes you listen, but mostly you play with his hair while he asks questions about theories of writing he doesn’t really expect answers to. You don’t prefer books, honestly; you’re not illiterate, your parents saw to that if nothing else, but the music of a voice speaks more to you than any image garbled strings of phlegm and tongue ever could. Still, there’s something about Thomas reading Edith’s writing that makes you appreciate the flow of it all, the way that the sentences are structured so that his voice dips and pauses and flows, so that you get the range of every kind of sound your brother can make when he’s vulnerable to the spell of text.

In the day time, when Thomas isn’t busy trying to convince Mr. Cushing to relent, the three of you tuck together, and you lace your arms with Edith in a way that makes your brother flush high on his pale cheeks, pretty, while he talks to your little butterfly about her faery stories. Sometimes, if you’re particularly bold, you play with her hair, adjust her clothes; little nurturing things, little coddlings as you let the two of them talk. 

You’re patiently weaving three different patinas of gold in the late autumn light when your brother again tries to make a case for marrying Edith, and she again hesitates. 

“I think it should be interesting to have you at the house.” You say, twisting the bottom of her hair into a little loop that suggests a knot. She and Thomas both look at you, twins in expressions, if opposite in features. 

“You do?” Edith says, and you smile.

“We have so few beautiful things at home.” You observe, and you can feel your brother watch you as you drape your head onto her shoulder, almost affectionate. His eyes meet yours, calculating, prying, trying to figure you out. But your brother has never had much of a head for having heart, and especially not one like yours. “You could be a new species there, you know.”

“Wouldn’t that make me invasive?” Comes the honey-sweet reply, and you kiss her mouth in a way that only Americans really excuse as European extravagance, smile like it’s a little secret.

“Only if you’re strong enough to last.” You say, and your brother clears his throat, and declares that it’s time for tea.

-

“You seem like the more level headed of the two.” He tells you, handing you the cheque, and you are. You are.

You consider the dramatic irony of it all when you are making his head extremely un-level. Nobody expects a cool head to come attached to a well tuned body, but you are what nobody expects. Nobody expects death, or love, or the shadow that follows them. Nobody expects the howl of the wolf or the feeling of the wind’s fingernails running down their spine until it’s happening. Certainly nobody expects the small, frail flower like you to come for them, for the red lace of your cuffs to hide something more than just a lingering drop or two of perfume.

You let blood bloom roses beneath your feet and think to yourself that it is the only nurturing thing this man can make. Honestly, it astounds you that your specimen survived so long, having such a callous mentor to grow up under, such rough retributions surely skinning glittering scales from her beautiful wings, perfect tears from her beautiful eyes.

“Tell me how she looks when she cries.” You whisper to your brother, a parting kiss beneath his ear, a subtlety hidden beneath an otherwise perfectly civil embrace. 

You board the train. The cheque clears. Three days later, you receive a singular letter via post, with only one word inscribed upon it:

Beautiful.

-

It’s a word that rings around in your head for a few days, climbs down your throat and into your belly, heats you from the inside out. Beautiful, he had said, beautiful.

You are sublime, you are perfect, you are a goddess; your brother has never called you beautiful. Thomas has claimed that there isn’t enough power in the word to describe you, and you agree. It would be trying to hold you in one scale, but it’s perfect for Edith. 

Edith, who shows up like glittering snow and sunlight, dotted with pansies as if she alone could give flowers the strength to spring up in sunlight. Edith, who takes a look around your mansion and, for the first time, doesn’t seem to look on it with despair.

“It’s so big!” She says to Thomas, silvery voice evincing excitement rather than disgust. In the middle of the entryway, she looks very tiny, a dot of pearlescent radiance catching light in the broken beams of light that filter down through the hole in the roof. “How many doors are there?”

“I don’t know.” He replies, because he doesn’t. “Would you like to count them?”

“There are forty seven.” You say, at last emerging from the shadows of the kitchen connector. When you wrap your arms around Thomas, there is no need for paltry words, or even sublime chords. Your bodies against each other, pressed closely enough together that you can feel your corset digging in against the soft expanse of his stomach. When you look at Edith over your brother’s shoulder, you send her a tiny, mischievous grin.

“Not counting the secret ones.” You tell her, and you watch something spark in her amber eyes, some debris of a creature long trapped inside the fossilized sweetness. You hold a hand out to her, not stretching, merely a turn of fingers for her to take if she’s willing. 

And she is. And she does, steps closer and closer until there’s no option but for you and Thomas to rest on either side of her. 

“Are you interested in our secrets?” You ask her, breathing in her scent. Her answer comes firm, singular, blood pooling in her cheeks as the suspicions you’ve seen at the back of her head take full root and sprout:

“Yes.”

-

It occurs to you early on that your brother has been quite slow to catch wind of your motives.

You observe this the first time the two of you sit down to make tea, and are somewhat alarmed when he brings out one of the poisoned canisters from the cupboard. He makes it as far as unscrewing the tin cap and picking up the spoon before your voice breaks over the silence, rolls out more livid than even you really expected it to.

“What are you doing, exactly?” You ask Thomas, and his hand grows tight around the spoon. He gets that look in his eyes like he used to give your father’s shadow, and your jaw only grows more tense at it. You hate that look. It’s cruel of him to use it when he’s the one being so insensible. 

“I’m… Making tea for Edith?” He answers, and you pluck the spoon out of his hands.

“You’re making poison.” You say, and rap his knuckles sharply with the cool curve of the spoon’s underside. “Why are you making poison?”

His brows furrow, then smooth, then furrow, familiar expressions twisted up in consternation as if he’s looking into one of his machines, trying to figure out why it isn’t working the way he expects it to. Finally, he sighs, and looks at you with a beseeching glance.

“Lucille, what are your plans for her?” He asks you, and you take the cap of the tin from him too, and reseal it. No sense in wasting perfectly good arsenic. 

“Our plans, I thought,” You say coolly, standing to replace the tin, “Were to buy new stock.”

“Who before, we’ve eaten alive.” He says, and a smile finds a way to your lips.

“She has a business, Thomas. Her father’s business didn’t dry up and turn to nothing the moment I cracked his head open. There will be money coming in from that for a very long time, even if you weren’t to get that machine of yours running -”

“I will-” He tries to interject, but you place a finger over his mouth, your nail pressing into the cleft of his clever lips with soft reproach.

“I know. But in the event that you weren’t, she’s still a good provider. That all stops if she dies, really, without her around to sign orders to have her funds transferred, our debts paid.” You explain with a small roll of your shoulders. “And besides… She is rather pretty, isn’t she?”

It dawns on him then, and he blinks at you, the cogs of his mind not catching on each other quite right. 

“You… Have an interest in her?” He asks, tentative, and you lean towards him, stroke his hair.

“Don’t you?” You ask, and he swallows, tight, as your fingers skim down his throat. “She’s a bright little thing, isn’t she? And it’s clear she’s been aching all her life for someone who can take care of her. Nurture her… You feel that, don’t you? She clung to you when she lost her father, imagine how long it must’ve taken her to pretend she didn’t miss her mother.”

You’re close enough to see the way his pupils dilate, the way he licks his lips; he’s uncertain with your proposal, but the excitement is clear. He always has been terrible at hiding his feelings from anyone, most of all you.

“You want to mother her?” He asks, lowering his lashes as you lean in to run your lips against the corner of his mouth. 

“I want to make her ours.” You whisper back, “Like I’m yours…. Like you are mine.”

Your brother only keens, low, and kisses your mouth in hungry agreement.

-

The first time she sees a ghost, you are doubtful.

The second time, you are suspicious.

The third time, you know that something needs to be done.

She goes out with Thomas, and watching the two of them leave you is like having your heart and lungs forcibly removed through your mouth, an angry wind reaching down and turning all your remaining organs to an acid that churns around inside of you.

They said to the post and back. They promised, to the post and back. 

You try to ignore the way the walls press in on you, the panic that you can feel rising at the back of your mind. In the mental hospital, they had trained you how to appear normal. They trained you how to lie and how to smile and how to curtsy and move along as though there was nothing wrong with you at all. 

Here, in the house, away from everyone, you do not remember any of this. You forget more and more as the cool darkness seems ready to swallow you up, as the world outside seems ever more foreboding and you feel as if, at any moment, you will find the doors thrown open and the hounds of hell set upon you, your brother and his wife far, far from you. Dead, even. They could be dead for all you know, and you find yourself shaking, rocking hard against yourself into the small hours of the morning, until every last ounce of your energy is drained.

Then, you force yourself to get up and prepare breakfast, vehemently denying to yourself that anything could ever separate you from them for long. 

They come back. They come back, with the sun - your brother brings Edith, and Edith brings light, and they are yours again, tucked safely into the breast of your home.

You vow they will never leave you again.

-

“Do you always take tea this sweet?” Edith asks you, and you nod your head amicably.

“The tea is local, and bitter - nothing gentle grows up here, Edith, Thomas told you that.” You remind her, removing a hair pin from her tidy locks. “If we didn’t sweeten it, it wouldn’t taste very good. And besides, we want to keep you sweet as possible, don’t we?” 

She flushes in front of you, pretty, and lifts the cup to her mouth again. You’re standing behind her in front of her dressing mirror, removing the day’s costume. At first, the idea of undressing in front of you was something that shocked her, never mind the idea of you undressing her. But she came to accept those ideas, as she’s come to accept so many things; laudanum is a wonderful catalyst for laxity in social mores and strong-headedness, you find.

Together, you and Thomas had agreed to move her into the idea of how things were to run slowly. There was no fighting it, really, she was always yours - she’d belonged with and to the two of you since you’d both laid eyes on her. It was just how things were. She’d come to see that. But you had both agreed that it would be better to relax her into it than shock her; beautiful things were so delicate, after all.

So this is the routine: you undress her in your own room, and she dresses for bed while you take off your day clothes. You help each other in the morning, lacing corsets, clasping buttons, fixing each other’s hair. It was awkward for her at first, but as you predicted, she so easily gave in to motherly nurturing, and now she sits for you, unguarded in her chemise, letting you brush out her hair for her.

Your long fingers run through her longer hair, admiring all the shades of shining light caught inside of it, glistening in the light of the candles. 

“Mm…” She says, softly, “That always feels so nice.”

“Does it?” You ask, equally low, keeping her calm. 

“Yes.” She says, and tilts her head back at you. Her eyes look like chocolate drops that you favoured as a child, the perfect saucer of tea before milk - everything warm, everything pleasurable. “I haven’t had my hair brushed since I was very little. Actually… I can’t remember the last time I felt so… Peaceful. Since I’ve been here with Thomas. And you.”

“You’ve been deprived, Edith. It’s a wonder you learned how to find any pleasure at all, before you came here.” You say. She sighs, dreamy - you don’t dose her tea all the time to prevent her from becoming too dependent, but with the past few nights bringing worries of rattling doors and moaning ghosts to her sleep, you’d figured a heavier hand with the laudanum would be better for all of you.

“Writing was enough, mostly.” She admits. 

“You were kept locked up in your head, poor girl.” You tell her, stroking her forehead back. “I don’t suppose anyone even taught you how to pleasure yourself.”

That makes her hesitate, look at you curiously. You often compare her to a butterfly, but in moments like this, she reminds you of a snow hare, small and timid and pale.

“Do you mean… How to keep my own company?” She asks, and you smile as though she’s a child being particularly senseless about the matter.

“I mean,” You elaborate, “Has anyone taught you how to feel the sorts of things you feel when you’re with Thomas?”

She looks away from you, but you can see her face grow ever more red; in the reflection of the mirror, her thighs rub against each other.

“…No.” She says. “I thought… Can you do that?”

You continue to brush her hair evenly, patient. “Oh, yes. Some figure it out for themselves, but others… Well, most, really, have to learn about it from someone close. You really didn’t know?”

There’s a pause before she shakes her head, and you don’t press the matter. You can tell the embarrassment of it is from her own perceived lack of knowledge by the self conscious set of her shoulders, all rolled in to her before she straightens them back out and clears her throat a little.

“…How?” She asks, and you smile, and set down the brush.

“Give that here.” You say, taking her empty tea cup and saucer from her and setting them down on your nightstand. “And come here…”

She rises, and you set the chair away, standing her with her back against you. Her hair smells like it always does, half hay and half honey, the smell of a ripe autumn that only poets dream up.

“Lucille.” She asks, and her voice is a little unsure as she watches you. But even with your face half pressed against her hair, you can see her reflection in the mirror. There’s no fear in her face; she trusts you, she’s come to trust you, despite her instincts about you and your brother and Allerdale. “Do you… Is this alright?” 

“I would think so. It’s just a lesson, isn’t it?” You query back. “Something you should have learned a long time ago.”

“But… I’m married to Thomas, and isn’t this? Something like what we do, he and I?” 

“Edith,” You reply, stroking her cheek, “We’re all in this together. We belong with each other, don’t we? As a family?”

She blinks, a realization, stringing the narrative together.

“Do you love me?” She asks, and you kiss her hair.

“Of course.” 

“In…As a sister?” 

You only run your hand from the cheek over her shoulder, squeeze it in a comforting way. “In any way that you like.” You tell her, and she rubs her legs together again, a nervous habit.

“…Thomas knows, doesn’t he?” She asks you, and you laugh a little, all breath.

“What do you think, Edith? We share everything with each other. Our thoughts, our secrets, our desires…” Your mouth brushes against her ear, the first contact she hasn’t been expecting, and you feel a full shiver run through her. But through the thin material of her chemise, you can see the pink buds of her nipples, pert, her pupils growing dark with the gesture. 

Waiting on her might drive her to hesitation, and you don’t want that. You can’t abide it, your hand slides down her arm to her hip, then down her thigh, fingers pinching up the chemise and drawing it higher, higher. Her feet and calves and thighs are cream rather than the porcelain colour you and Thomas share, but no less perfect for it, and you observe small, dark freckles here and there, dotting them as if an inverted constellation.

In the nights were you explored Thomas’s body as children, where you were hungry to learn all the differences there, you never imagined you could have such curiosity for someone of your own gender. In fact, for some reason, you’d imagined the whole half of your sex was the same as you. But Edith… 

Edith is decorated with dark golden curls, the same colour as the darkest parts of the hair on her head. The lips of her sex, even swollen, lift up from her clitoris, reveal the vivid pink folds of her. She’s already wet, you realize, candlelight catching her arousal, and she gasps as you slide the length of one finger down the peak of her.

“Shh, it’s alright.” You tell her, leaning forward to kiss her cheek, to nuzzle it. “You’re alright, Edith.”

“I’m sorry, I-” She babbles, but stops herself, worrying her lip for a moment. “It felt like… Like a…” 

When she trails off, you catch a bit of her come on your fingertip and roll it back up over the nub of swollen flesh, and she draws in another one of those shocked little breaths.

“A tongue.” She concludes as your fingertip rubs slowly over her clit. 

For a while, she’s quiet, other than the occasional groan that slips out. Her head falls back against your neck, and she lets you hike up her chemise, slip it off of her, lets herself stand naked, reflected in the mirror, her body rose coloured with desire. You find she likes having her neck sucked on, breast squeezed when you pleasure her, and soon enough, she’s winding up enough to lose embarrassment in the throes of passion.

“Can I kiss you?” She murmurs, and instead of answering with words, you tilt your mouth close enough for her to make the attempt. She loops an arm around your neck, kisses you hotly. When you bite her lips she only whimpers; when you lick into her mouth, she opens it for you to conquer. 

“Edith.” You say, after you’ve had a nice, long feast of her flowery lips and a sweeter feast of her laudanum and sugar coated tongue. Her hand is laced with yours as you guide it down, press her own fingers inside of her. “Crook them, like you’re calling me to you.”

And she does, sweetly confused until you guide her hand up and up and then she shivers, violent, and curls back into your figure.

“I didn’t know I could do that without-” She begins, embarrassed for her outburst, but you only kiss her mouth again, stroke your hands down her body and draw her into your embrace. 

“It’s alright. Do it again.” You say. 

And she does. 

And she does and she does and she does until she’s shaking against you, coming apart at the seams. She does until you swallow her sobs of pleasure; all but the last, of course.

All but your name.

-

The three of you settle in to the tail end of winter. 

If ghosts bother Edith any more, she doesn’t say. You don’t know whether it’s your measured hand with the laudanum or the fact that you and Thomas set out to destroy every last piece of evidence within the house, but she doesn’t seem bothered by them any more.

As the snowstorms begin to lessen, you send off more and more of Edith’s stories. Uninteresting to hear, were the words not repeated, picked over, dissected by the two melodies you love most, moving in harmonious intonation with one another. Some stories are published, most are not; either way, the mild recognition that your butterfly receives for her efforts makes her glow, and though you don’t allow newspapers to pass your threshold as a general rule, you allow a page or two via Thomas so that she can see herself set in print.

She glows, then. She glows with you, too, shame mostly forgotten as she lets you wring pleasure from her, or pleasures herself while you kiss her, while you whisper soothing words or hum wordless lullabies into her ear.

Thomas takes the time you free up for him during the day to work on his machine, and as the first shoots of spring sprout up from the ground, so does red, red, red.

And despite the achievement, despite the triumph, you meet his eyes with a steady order that he already knew was coming. Marketing the clay may take all of you afar, which means Edith, too. Your delicate lover, your sun and moon, your little golden butterfly, your white rabbit. You know you can’t leave her, and so she must be bound to the both of you.

Irrevocably. 

Forever.

-

“I see you’re taking lessons.” Thomas says, and you feel Edith go still inside your arms. 

The two of you are lying on your bed in your nightgowns, both open at the throat, revealing. It would be compromising if he weren’t your lover and Edith weren’t his wife. Edith draws against you a little more, seeking protection - from shame, you think, or possibly retribution - in your arms, and you hold her close and stroke the head that lays on your otherwise naked breast.

“She’s a very good study.” You reply, and as he chuckles, you feel Edith relax a little against you.

“I imagine so. She always has been.” He replies, stepping closer. Thomas leans down, kisses her mouth as she turns her head towards him, and winks. “And full of surprises.”

“Oh.” Edith squeaks, and she looks down the center of the bed between the two of you, the implications of his approval, of your comfort with his approval, of his approaching the two of you and kissing her. She repeats it, with more gravity. “Oh.”

“We belong together, Edith.” You tell her, keeping your voice that soothing, nurturing tone. She tilts her chin down, docile for a moment while she thinks, and Thomas takes a seat beside her, kisses her shoulder with delicate lips.

“We’re a pair. We’re two halves, my love. If it could be different it, would.” He explains, soft, and rests his cheek on her arm. 

“But it can’t be.” You emphasize, acting as though you think it’s a pity, or a burden. In some ways, it is. In some ways, it always has been.

Edith is very still, and very quiet, and for a moment, you think perhaps you’d given her more laudanum in her night time cup of tea than you’d intended. But she stirs, gradually, and turns to kiss your brother’s forehead. 

“I… think I understand.” She murmurs, and you pet her hair. “I love the both of you, but it’s…”

“Complicated.” The two of you say in unison, and she blinks before she puffs out a few little nerve-riddled laughs. 

“That’s a good word, I think.” She says. “But… What does that make us?”

“Partners.” Thomas says, grinning, his hand moving up her thigh. It slides over it, inside of it, familiar with your exact touches.

“Family.” You amend, your hands squeezing her breasts as your brother moves down, down. His tongue laps against her, rubs out a wave of pleasure that has her twisting her fingers in his hair and yours as she bites at your lips.

“You’re ours.” You tell her, and she nods, breathless.

“Yours.” She promises. And again, and again.

Yours.

Yours. 

_Yours._


End file.
